


Meld

by joely_jo



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe, Duty, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, F/M, Friendship, Imzadi (Star Trek), Love, Mind Meld, Past Relationship(s), Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, What-If, post-episode s03e23 Sarek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28819953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joely_jo/pseuds/joely_jo
Summary: What if Deanna mind melded with Sarek in place of Picard? Alternate universe imagining of the episode 'Sarek' from Season 3.
Relationships: William Riker/Deanna Troi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 35





	Meld

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU, of course. 
> 
> I have borrowed several lines from the script for 'Sarek' and embedded them into this story. Hopefully nobody will sue me for this. 
> 
> I normally use the past tense to write longer stories or stories I know are part of a bigger picture of other stories I’m writing. But as this is a complete and utter one shot, I’ve used present tense, which I see other writers in this ‘verse using a lot. I hope it doesn’t sound awkward compared to my usual style.

Meld

She knows it is something she can do, something that is important and needed, yet still there is a sense of trepidation that gnaws at her. What if she cannot bear it?

Vulcans and Betazoids have melded before, she tells herself. It is nothing to be concerned about. But how many Vulcan-Betazoid melds have there been with individuals suffering from Bendii syndrome? Will she be overwhelmed like Sarek? She is well used to handling human emotions and their sometimes extreme manifestations, but will that be enough? Vulcan minds are so very different…

She concentrates on dismissing the anxiety, packaging it away for another occasion when she can deal with it in her own way. She has to do this. Wants to do it.

In the soft light of her quarters, Picard’s face is shadowy, stoic but her sense of him communicates the knowledge that he understands what he is asking of her. “I’ll do it, Captain,” she tells him.

“It will not be easy,” he warns her. “The Ambassador’s mind is one of the most powerful of Vulcan minds.”

“I know that. But there is no other alternative is there?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t believe so.” Her body feels suddenly heavy with responsibility and she goes to the couch and sits. Picard is watching her, cautiously. “Is there anything I can do to make this easier for you, Deanna?” 

She does not hesitate. “I want Will with me, Captain.”

“Of course.” He turns and taps his communicator, summons Will from the Bridge, then turns back to her. “I know this is hard for you, Deanna, but I fear it is our only option. Sarek will not be able to complete the negotiations alone. He needs your help.”

“I understand. I want to help him.”

And she does. Helping people is her job, her vocation. It is what drives her, makes her get up each day and face all manner of dangers that would make a lesser person shiver in fear. She likes to feel needed.

Oftentimes that is all she needs to face whatever is thrown at her, but today, it seems there is something missing. Today, she feels that fear.

***

Will presses the chime when he arrives but she knows it is him by the comforting pulse of his emotions behind the door. Will Riker has always been familiar to her. Even when they had only just met, there was something about him that felt like she’d known him forever. Old souls, her grandmother used to say. We are all old souls and we walk through life looking for our other self. Sometimes we find them, sometimes we don’t, but the walk is the same for everyone.

“Come in,” she calls, and the doors swish open to reveal him standing there. She feels something inside her loosen and relax. He covers the distance between them in three large strides.

“Deanna…” His voice is fractured with concern for her.

She goes to him and he folds her into his embrace. For a moment they stand together, oblivious of the captain there beside them both, as he looks at the floor to give them a measure of privacy.

In the cocoon of his arms, slowly, the fear eases. She steps back and looks at the captain. “Go and speak to Ambassador Sarek. Tell him I will help him.”

***

Sarek’s fingers are cool on her cheek, the rough skin of his fingertips like parchment or linen. She fixes her eyes on his, tries to centre herself as she feels the incursion of the mindmeld begin.

“Your thoughts to my thoughts…”

Sarek’s voice seems to echo in the quiet of her quarters, though she knows it is a trick of her mind and not reality.

In the corner of her field of vision, she sees Will sitting straddled on a chair, his face carefully schooled. She reaches out with her empathy while the meld is forming, touches the familiar aura of his thoughts, something to hold onto while her world upends.

***

“No! It is wrong. It is _wrong_! A lifetime of discipline washed away… and in it’s place… Bedlam. Bedlam!”

Angrily, she paces, pinwheeling her arms in frustration. The floor is crunchy under her feet, the pink and purple remnants of a vase she has smashed through fury. Part of her recognises the destruction and she stops, looking down at the shattered pieces, their impossible jigsaw. “Oh! Oh no…”

Dropping to her knees she starts to pick up the fragments. Will joins her and she sees his fingers move alongside hers, collecting pieces, collecting, collecting…

She stops.

There is nothing left.

“Dead friends,” she murmurs, her eyes losing focus as Sarek’s emotions overwhelm her once more. “Gone. All gone.”

Tears burn in her eyes, sharp like acid.

“Perrin… Amanda…” She can’t hold it back. It’s like a flood, a tsunami, wildfire. Passion, desire, love, affectionwantneedlovesex…….. Her voice chokes on itself, the tears running thicker now, unabated. “Did you know? Perrin, can you know how much I love you?” She breaks down in a sob. “I do love you!”

“Deanna—”

Will’s voice is gentle, almost pleading. She lifts her head and looks at him. His face is blurred, unclear and indistinct, but she feels his mind awkwardly reaching for hers. Out of practice as he is, the gesture is clumsy. Too many years have passed since they laid in one another’s arms and made love with their minds, since he learned that a caress with his thoughts could be as erotic as one with his hands. She blinks and her own tears join Sarek’s.

_Imzadi._

“I’m here,” he says, and she knows that he has heard her.

***

His mind is like home to her, tender in its affection, and for a moment, she rises through the fog of Sarek’s thoughts, a bird with the wind beneath her wings. The touch of him comforts and clears her head and she looks at him, seeing him in all his familiar beauty.

“Deanna, are you all right?”

“It’s difficult,” she admits. “Very difficult. The anguish of the man…” Her voice trails away and she looks down at the floor, at the tiny pieces of the vase that she will never get back, at skin on the back of his hand as it rests on his thigh. “All those feelings. The regrets pouring out of him. Will, I… oh… ohhhhh…”

The tears begin again and she feels him take her in his arms and hold her, a piece of driftwood she can use to keep afloat. “I can’t stop them,” she confesses into his shoulder. “I can’t… stop…”

“Then don’t try,” he tells her and his grip around her tightens.

***

When Sarek’s mind leaves her, she is exhausted, her body heavier than stone. Barely conscious, she feels strong arms – Will’s, she thinks – lift her and carry her to her bed, where she curls on her side and sinks immediately into sleep.

In her dreams, she is Sarek and she sees the echo of his experience of the negotiations, the amphibious forms of the Legarans, their burbling voices and contemplative intellect. Calm, she discusses the details of the treaty, bartering over minutiae, feeling reenergised, almost youthful.

At length, she wakes, the dreams still vivid in her mind. The room is dark, but there is a familiar sense behind her, pressed up against her back.

Will.

He is asleep, his breathing even and deep. Reaching out with her mind, she coaxes him awake and he sighs, pulling himself out of slumber with the practised sureness of a lifelong Starfleet officer.

Turning, she faces him.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “How are you feeling?”

She thinks. “Fine. I feel… rested… and different somehow.” A frown patterns his brow, his concern for her surging up again.

“What do you mean – different?”

“He’s gone, but he’s also not. My sense of him is the same as it was before the meld, but…” She reaches for an analogy he will understand. “It’s like he’s left footprints in my mind.”

“Hm.” He seems to settle at that explanation, standing down from his protectiveness. His next question is voiced aloud, but sounds more like the kind of mental meanderings he only ever shares with her. “I wonder what Sarek’s feeling now?”

She can’t answer that. Sarek is as he was. Saying that out loud seems almost a crime; she aches for the man and the loss of his stability. How awful it must be to sink into that kind of chaos when all you have known is order!

Will seems to sense the tenor of her thoughts and quietly says, “I used to think Vulcans were so cold and remote – I had a Vulcan roommate for a while at the Academy and I never really understood him. But after all this… I realise that they must feel just as intensely as we do.”

“Yes,” she agrees, her mind flickering back to the regrets Sarek had for never expressing his love to his wives. She resolves to tell Perrin when next they see one another – a woman should not be denied the knowledge that she is loved like that.

Will interrupts her thoughts. “Do you think you’re ready to face the world again?”

“Hm, maybe.” She sits up so her legs are over the edge of the bed, her eyes fixed on the blankness of the wall. She considers the man lying on the bed behind her, the years they have known each other and the roles they have played in one another’s lives – lover, friend, colleague, imzadi. In her soul she knows how important he is to her, thinks she knows how that feeling is reflected for him, but the experiences of the last twelve hours mean she needs assurance. “Do you love me, Will?”

There is a little edge of panic in his thoughts as he pulls himself up. He is wondering what she wants to hear from him, what she means for him to do. “Deanna…” he says, reaching out and tugging her by the arm so she faces him. Their eyes meet. “Is this because of Sarek?”

She smiles a little at that – he is more intuitive than she often gives him credit for – and nods.

“Thought so,” he says with a small, wry chuff.

“That doesn’t make it an invalid question.”

“No, of course it doesn’t.”

“So do you?”

Will smiles. “What do you think?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she almost shouts. “I need to hear you say it.”

A beat passes.

“Because of Sarek?”

“Because of Sarek,” she confirms and looks down at her hands, imagining them pressed up against her own face, along cheekbone and jaw.

Silence, then she hears him shift and he sinks to the floor in front of her, takes up her hands and holds them in his own. “Deanna, I’ve always loved you,” he says.

The words release a flood of relief inside her and she laughs at her own neediness, at the soft earnestness in his voice and the honesty in his blue eyes. Tears prickle and she looks away, embarrassed for a moment, but he turns her face back to him and slowly leans in to kiss her.

It is chaste and friendly, with just the faintest hint of something more beneath the surface, something he is keeping tightly reined in. She pulls him closer and kisses him back and she feels the sensation of his resolve beginning to crumble. It would be so easy, she thinks, to slip back into this with him, to let him ease back into that place inside her that she saves just for him, for when things are right for them to try again.

But now is not that time. She knows this and so, she thinks, does he, despite the glowing embers of desire she can feel starting to burn inside him.

With some reluctance, he pulls back and looks at her, his eyes soft. He’s tamped down the fire within and ordered his mind again and she thinks fleetingly of Sarek and all his passion, all his love, repressed and controlled. Maybe they are not so very different after all.

“Is that what you needed?” he asks.

She nods, grateful beyond words, and as he stands and offers her his hands, pulls herself up and takes a deep breath. They should go to see the Captain, let him know that everything is as it should be. Will goes to leave the bedroom to give her privacy to tidy herself up, but hovers in the doorway a moment. 

“I’ll always be here for you, Deanna. You know that, don’t you?”

She wonders if he is talking about times like these, times of personal challenge and difficulty, or if there is some other meaning to his words, a promise that he’ll wait and that he’ll still be here whenever she wants to take that step. She smiles at him and suddenly, everything is clear. There is no need to analyse it. “I know,” she says. “I have always known.”

_fin_


End file.
